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    Threshold deontologists like Moore and Alexander hold tha... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Wrong acts on a deontological account cannot be translated into bad states of affairs that are subject to aggregation.

    Threshold deontologists like Moore and Alexander hold that sufficiently large aggregates of rights violations can override agent-relative constraints.

    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Moral intuition: killing one innocent person to save a million is permissible, suggesting aggregate consequences can override individual rights.
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    • 2.Pure agent-relative constraints would permit absurd outcomes: protecting one person's right while a billion suffer preventable deaths.
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    • 3.Rights themselves derive moral force from protecting human interests; sufficiently large aggregates of violated interests justify overriding constraints.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Threshold deontology lacks principled criteria for determining when aggregates become 'sufficiently large' to override constraints.
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    • 2.If rights can be overridden by aggregate consequences, rights lose their normative force as constraints and become merely rebuttable preferences.
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    • 3.Historical atrocities (utopian projects, genocides) were justified by claiming large-scale benefits outweigh individual violations—threshold reasoning enables this.
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    Related

    Historical atrocities (utopian projects, genocides) were justified by claiming l...If rights can be overridden by aggregate consequences, rights lose their normati...Moral intuition: killing one innocent person to save a million is permissible, s...Pure agent-relative constraints would permit absurd outcomes: protecting one per...
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    Rights themselves derive moral force from protecting human interests; sufficient...Threshold deontology lacks principled criteria for determining when aggregates b...Wrong acts on a deontological account cannot be translated into bad states of af...

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    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
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